People Australia

William Henry (Bill) Mellor (1863-1897) socialist and trade union leader

Birth: 14 November 1863 at Hamer Bottoms, Wuerdle, Rochdale, Lancashire, son of Joseph Mellor (1820-1878), wool sorter, and Ann, née Hurst (1821-1889), who signed with a mark. Marriage: 19 July 1886 at Ultimo, Sydney, New South Wales, to Lancashire-born Maria Ann Howarth (1864-1922). They had three sons and two daughters. Death: 11 June 1897 in hospital in Perth, Western Australia. Religion: Labour Church

• Described as a brickyard labourer, he arrived in Sydney as an assisted immigrant aboard the Lochee on 19 May 1883.
• By 1890 he was in Melbourne, Victoria, when he organised the unemployed, leading them in evicting bailiffs and repossessing goods from auction rooms.
• In 1892, with John Fleming, he addressed a Knights of Labor meeting of socialists in Bendigo. Later that year he moved to Sydney, where he was secretary of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), addressed meetings of the Australian Socialists’ League, became general secretary of the Rent Revision League and was foundation secretary of the Social Democratic Federation. Disrupted political meetings and agitated for social reform with Labor activists including William Higgs. In 1894 he was elected president of the Darlington Labor Electoral League.
• Moved to Perth, Western Australia, about 1895. Elected president of the Builders' Labourers Society (BLS) in September 1896. In December he became acting secretary of the BLS after C. Martin was injured in an accident and early in 1897 was elected secretary.
• Was president of the Eight-Hour Society. Distributed the SDF paper, the Socialist, in Perth. Assisted Hugh de Largie to raise funds in Kalgoorlie for 'Socialist Imprisonment Fund' 1896.
• Early in 1897, in McQueen’s words, he was “at the forefront of the biggest strike that Perth and Fremantle had known”. Through the Democratic Reform League and the Labour Church, he organised May Day celebrations.
• Prominent with Montague Miller and others in setting up the Labour Church of Perth in May 1897.
• Bill Mellor died from injuries he received after falling from a scaffold on a building site in St George’s Terrace. Labour Church members attended the funeral.
• The labour movement collected donations to support his wife and family, who returned to England, where Mellor’s posthumous youngest son was born in December 1897. His widow remarried in 1898.

Sources
Verity Burgmann, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885-1905 (Sydney, 1985); Humphrey McQueen, We built this country: builders’ labourers and their unions, 1787 to the future (Port Adelaide, 2011), pp 62 etc.